Two theories of social class and social stratification.

Social class and social stratification belongs to classic topics of sociology. The paper deals with the two contemporary most influential theories of classes: Erik Olin Wright's neo-marxist theory and John H. Goldthorpe's neo-weberian class theory. The purpose of this paper is to consider how these theories represent the two major theoretical traditions of class analysis in sociology and to discuss main streams of their critique. The author argues that in spits of many common characteristics, the compared theories preserve their distinctive features: the core concept of the first one is class relations, the second has got rather gradualistic character. The neo-marxist theory has still recognised the existence of the distinct class of capitalists, the neo-weberian theory attempts to conceal its existence. Wright argues that the main division line is that between employers and employees, Goldthorpe: considers it to be the line between manual and non-manual workers. Neo-marxists still distinguish between capitalists and other classes. On the next hand, neo-weberians state that there is the plurality of noncapitalist social classes.